Overview

Descriptive writing is everywhere—in menus, travel brochures, advertisements, and friendly letters. Such writing does more than tell something—it shows it. How? By providing carefully chosen and well-placed details. Effective descriptive details can bring a person, a place, or a thing to life.

Sensory details are an important part of descriptive writing. Adding these to your writing will make it possible for your reader to visualize what you describe. Sensory details can evoke strong images that your reader can react to and remember. Details can also help create a mood, or feeling.

By revealing details in a particular order, you can create suspense and anticipation. Using transition and position words is also important in descriptive writing. Transition and position words help define a scene more clearly by showing how each detail relates to the others.

Strong and meaningful descriptions not only give life to your characters, settings, and plots; they give life to your writing as well.